


So This is How the World Ends

by xhiro



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: F/M, Insomnia, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-30
Updated: 2017-01-30
Packaged: 2018-09-20 21:51:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 781
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9517661
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xhiro/pseuds/xhiro
Summary: Pidge has measured out her life in nuts and bolts and "Do I dare?" and "Do I dare?"





	

**Author's Note:**

> It's not Very Shippy per se. It's mostly Pidge being homesick. This was an experiment in uh... something. Oh boy.

 

7638 light years from Earth.

 

Pidge looks at her watch again.

 

7639.

 

0300 hours until sunrise back home.

 

0100 hours until her alarm goes off. She rolls over.

 

She catalogues the things in the bathroom precisely. 1 toothbrush, standard issue green, 3 tubes of toothpaste, mint, 8.2 ounces each. The towels hang off the bathroom wall in a row neatly, 3.

 

She looks in the mirror. 2 bloodshot eyes, skin near the eyes irritated and swollen. Blood vessels dilated from prolonged stress to eyes. Skin beginning to dry and become pale, possibly irritated by airborne pollutents and unknown elements from foreign atmosphere.

 

657 days since Matthew Holt was reported as missing in action during the Kerberos expedtion.

 

Pidge spits and repeats.

 

→

 

5 days without incident.

 

A training droid flies through the air knocking Lance to the ground. Keith erupts into laughter.

 

0 days without incident.

 

Pidge watches over the proceedings dully, prone on the couch.

 

Wormholes. If she can somehow recreate the circumstances of the castle's escape, track its trajectory, travel backwards. Coran said the Teludav lenses could be adjusted-do stress tests, benchmark. Hypothesize.

 

A rich, warm bark of laughter to her left. Dutifully scolding Lance and Keith, dark, black eyes. Like coal, he said. But she's seen them come to life, burning, Shiro, searing. She pulls back her sleeve to check for blisters, but finds none.

 

Prometheus.

 

Or a flamecast shadow dancing on the wall. She looks even worse in the window.

 

Takashi Shirogane laughs exactly 7 times. She checks again.

 

Pidge thinks about home.

 

→

 

“There's a light at the end of the universe.”

 

It's that cocky grin again, the one Lance wears. He swings his leg like a pendulum.

 

“But the universe is constantly expanding.” For Keith, its his brows narrowed, nearly a straight line of disapproval from eyebrow to eyebrow.

 

“Hey, the earth was flat until the 5th century.” A smirk.

 

Lights flash in front of Pidge's face as she expands and unexpands the universe again and again.

 

“Not going to join in the debate?” Shiro leans back against the couch beside her. He takes a sip and the Kepler-30 system flickers into view above him.

 

“It would make my search a lot easier if it was finite.” The familiar burning. She shields the back of her neck. Stars orbit around them in slow rotation.

 

He watches them, eyes trained on a distant blip. She reaches out and measures the two inches between her thumb and pointer finger. Another 200 light years. 17 more hours until their next destination. 24 days until her birthday. 2 years until she would've enlisted.

 

18,766 more combinations of scaultrite lens angles.

 

600 days since she read the word 'Voltron'.

 

Takashi Shirogane was the last person to see her brother.

 

“I used to have trouble adjusting,” he scratches the end of his nose. “You can't turn the stars off.”

 

Not a fire, maybe a warm beach, grains of sand slipping through her toes. The waves roll back and forth against the shore.

 

“Have you tried counting sheep?”

 

→

 

Pidge builds up to Rover 682.

 

She rewrites the defence system until Coran now needs an instruction manual.

 

She learns how to discuss intergalactic politics in Altean.

 

She loses very badly against the difficult level A.I. in the training room.

 

She tries to bake cookies.

 

She looks at her watch. 0500 hours.

 

She does it all again.

 

 

→

 

Matt Holt was the 27, 337th cadet at Galaxy Garrison.

 

When he was 10, he used to share a room with his sister who is 4 years younger than him. Her nightmares lasted approximately 3 minutes.

 

On those nights, he would climb down and hold her hand until she calmed down. He would tell her about constellations, pointing out distant planets in the stars, plotting out future journeys. She liked it best when he explained how the launch would go. Together they would count down, one number after the other, as she closed her eyes and dreamt of space.

 

“Ten, night, eight, seven, six...”

 

→

 

Pidge Gunderson sits upright and makes one long wracking sob into her hands.

 

→

 

There isn't an approxmate number for how long she takes.

 

His room is up the stairs, down the hall, to the left.

 

It's an unmeasured number of steps, but her feet know the way.

 

It smells like the breeze, salt in the air, the shore rushing up to meet her. She feels tired.

 

In a small voice she confesses, “I miss home.”

 

Shiro looks at her, eyes wide. For a second it's scorching, she can feel the blisters on her skin.

 

But he's just looking at her, arms reaching down, and finally she falls forward.

 

“Me too.”

 


End file.
